'Walking' a pleasantly humorous dinosaur tale

"Walking With Dinosaurs" PG — Full of humor, adventure and information, this animated 3-D dinosaur adventure will entertain kids 8 and older very well.

Some of the dangers in the story make "Walking with Dinosaurs" a bit too much for under-8s, though seeing it in 2-D could tame it a bit.

Our dinosaur hero and his herd face fires, predators, violent rivalries, and the loss of parents. These are not too graphically rendered, but still not for kids under 8. The film starts with a present-day human prologue: A boy (Charlie Rowe) and girl (Angourie Rice) drive through the wilds of Alaska with their uncle (Karl Urban), a paleontologist in search of dinosaur bones. The boy isn't interested and stays near the truck. Then a talking bird (voice of John Leguizamo) flies up and starts spinning a dinosaur tale from 70 million years ago. The young dinosaur hero he speaks of is Patchi (voice of Justin Long), a perky Pachyrhinosaurus. The runt of his litter, Patchi narrowly escapes being eaten by a huge omnivore and sustains a permanent hole in the bony outcropping on his head. His big brother Scowler (Skyler Stone) teases and bullies him, but he's befriended by Alex (Leguizamo again), a colorful bird who is our narrator. Alex follows the spunky little dinosaur, happily munching bugs off him, as the herd goes on its annual migration, loses members in a vicious forest fire, and nearly drowns while treading on ice that gives way. Patchi's and Scowler's parents die, but not on-screen.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The humor includes dinosaur poop, vomit and flatulence jokes, not surprisingly. The forest fire, predatory attacks, and a scene in which some of the herd fall through a frozen lake, are scary. Most of this is more implied than graphic, but in 3-D it's still intense. The male dinosaurs have non-lethal head-butting contests.

"Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" PG-13 — Even though high-schoolers don't remember the advent of national cable news, circa 1980, this sequel (to "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," PG-13, 2004) will give them a good laugh, because the premise still works.

Note: This comedy is too raunchy for middle-schoolers without parental OK. Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his now-wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) are co-anchoring weekend news in New York when their big boss (Harrison Ford) fires Ron and makes Veronica a weeknight anchor.

This wrecks their marriage and estranges the dumb, self-absorbed Ron from their young son (Judah Nelson). Just when all seems lost, an exec (Dylan Baker) from a budding cable news channel, "GNN," invites Ron to get his old team together for a national gig — the 2 a.m. news. Competing with the new network's prime-time anchor (James Marsden) for ratings, Ron and his guys — smarmy reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), delusional weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and idiot sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) — resort to anything.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The script is peppered with midrange profanity and one or two F-words, plus crass verbal sexual innuendo, including STD jokes. Burgundy's awkwardness at working with African-Americans comes out in verbal fusillades of weird, stereotypical urban slang. Burgundy's young son opens a box containing sexy lingerie and puts it on his head. Fantana wants to do an "investigative" series on the vagina. An early scene implies that Fantana is photographing porn stills when he's actually taking pictures of kittens. Burgundy is often drunk and smokes crack on the air as a feature story. There are steamy but nongraphic sexual situations. Other comedy features an attempted suicide and jokes about blindness. Sportscaster Champ Kind won't serve African-Americans, Jews or Catholics in his restaurant. (Phobics note: there are bats and a scorpion.) The battle scene finale involves guns, axes, crossbows, and aerial strafing.

"Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas" PG-13 — Teens may roll their eyes more often than they giggle at this lesser holiday comedy from Tyler Perry. In it, middle-class African-Americans from Atlanta mingle with good-natured rednecks from the rural South as they deal with an unexpected biracial marriage. Based on a stage play of his, this film is best aimed at adults already in tune with Perry's broad, slightly lewd comedy stylings — this time with a Hallmark Card-style message. As the film opens, the sharp-tongued battle-ax Madea (Perry in drag, as usual) gets fired for rudeness during a brief gig as a holiday salesclerk in a department store. Madea's niece Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) begs Madea to drive her down to a small town for Christmas, where Eileen's daughter Lacey (Tika Sumpter) has bought a farm and works as a schoolteacher . Lacey has been secretive, and Eileen aims to learn why. It becomes clear to Madea that Lacey and her "farm hand" Conner (Eric Lively), who is white, are in love (married, in fact), but Lacey is afraid to tell her mom. Conner's countrified parents Buddy (Larry the Cable Guy) and Kim (Kathy Najimy) are coming for Christmas, too, providing lots of awkwardly comic getting-to-know-you moments. Perry also injects a subplot about allowing prayer — at least Christian prayer — in public schools.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Madea, who briefly substitutes in Lacey's class, uses Christmas lights to tie a misbehaving little girl to a large wooden cross, which seems like a particularly tasteless joke. The dialogue includes a muffled F-word, other milder profanity, a great deal of adult oriented, but not-too-explicit sexual innuendo, toilet humor, and verbal and visual references to the Ku Klux Klan. There are drug and moonshine references, too. We see a man briefly trapped in an overturned burning truck.

"American Hustle" R — "Some of this actually happened," an opening graphic informs us at the start of "American Hustle." Despite its 1970s setting, this crime and corruption comedy could be highly entertaining to film fans 17 and older. It is too lewd for under-17s. Inspired by the "Abscam" scandal of the same era, in which FBI agents worked with con men to entrap elected officials in corruption, this movie is just about perfect — hugely funny, beautifully acted and designed, with not a single unnecessary scene. Christian Bale, with beer gut, toupee and bad comb-over, plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time con man.

Unhappily married to the coiffed and manicured but unstable Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Irving falls in love — and in cahoots — with a beauty named Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). They start conning people out of thousands of dollars in fees by promising them millions in overseas loans. An FBI agent of limited abilities, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), gets wise to their scam. Promising judicial leniency, he forces them to help him entrap the bribable mayor (Jeremy Renner) of Camden, N.J., then a couple of U.S. senators. The mafia gets involved, too. The ambitious G-Man and his bosses are dumber than their criminal collaborators.

The horrors of 1970s hair and fashion are the icing on the cake.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The film includes brief scenes of violence — mob shootings, non-lethal but violent threats involving guns, fists and near-strangulation. There are several steamy, semi-explicit sexual situations. One character smokes pot. Sydney wears revealing tops with plunging 1970s necklines. Characters use strong profanity, smoke cigarettes and drink.

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